Feeding earthworms to fish.

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Any time I have ever fed garden earthworms to my fish they went wild !

 

[sharkweek178]

Grindal worms are very easy to culture and you can have an ongoing supply of worms that you know are safe from pathogens or pesticides.

 

[Alice B]

I feed flakea mainly, freeze dried bloodworms sometimes. I wanted to give them some live food.

I hunt mosquito larva if I want to offer live food. Dog's water bowl is an excellent place to raise a few quickly without stream contaminants. Saltwater fish LOVE mosquito larva, and since I really worried about disease and contamination on their tank, they got a lot of mosquito larva the year I built backyard pond but no pump

 

[glyn]

Back in the 1960s, the now-defunct Aquarist & Pondkeeper here in the UK reported on a fish-feeding trial. Guppies were fed a variety of foods, and the number of babies born was carefully counted. Flake food, white worms and chopped earthworms were amongst the foods trialed. The very clear winner was chopped earthworms.

Even then, it was surprising that the magazine courageously dared the wrath of flake food advertisers.

However, flake food has moved on since then, and the ingredients of some brands are very impressive. In addition, as pointed out above, you have to leave the earthworms in water for an hour or so to purge themselves. And, further, you have to have the stout heart needed to chop them up thoroughly. [And possibly hide that last stage of the process from significant others; creating your own home worm abattoir is not always a primrose path.]

Nonetheless, I recall in the 1970s and 80s using chopped earthworms to get fish breeding, like many other aquarists I knew, especially cichlids like Blue Acaras, Kribensis, etc. I don't recall any issues arising from feeding chopped earthworms, except for the practicalities mentioned above. I even used tiny whole earthworms to help a Copperband Butterfly adapt to my soft coral marine tank about 8 years ago. That fish is still thriving, albeit in someone else's tank, as of several months ago, when I decided to switch to a planted freshwater system.

In conclusion, I'll be raiding my compost bins to feed chopped earthworms again, when my new tank gets going, since it's such an incredibly nutritious food. I'll only do it sparingly, since frozen foods are just so convenient, especially small tetra-friendly foods like cyclops, daphnia, etc.

 

[Ichthys]

In addition, as pointed out above, you have to leave the earthworms in water for an hour or so to purge themselves.

You don’t actually. Unless they’re very small, you can hold them just in front of the saddle and gently squeeze them empty in one go (a la toothpaste).

 

[GaryE]

I'll go against the grain and call for live food whenever possible. I've already talked here about this, but I am a fish breeder more than a keeper. I do not get the numbers and quality of eggs with any prepared foods that I get with live. A mix of white and grindal worms, daphnia, mosquito larvae and baby brine shrimp gives me great results. In winter, I lean heavily on whiteworms and artemia.

Even white worms alone, fed in the evening, will give me lots of eggs the next day (with fish that spawn daily). No prepared food does that. It would be sooooo much less trouble if they did, and an industrially produced food that equals live is on my wishlist. So is world peace and a sustainable economy.

I read the claims and try the brands as they come out, and they consistently fail. Only soldier fly larvae based foods have had success, though they are not as productive as real bugs. I have some soldier flies dried for chickens, and I plan to grind them up to make a frozen paste food with them, to see if that can save me time and trouble. If I feed them directly, after grinding them up, the calcium content seems high.

It isn't magic or any essential properties - I think it's good nutrition combined with exoskeletons and other roughage. With white worms, which you have to use sparingly, it's fat and protein bombing the fish.

Frozen is second best, as freezing affects the structure and roughage. I'm allergic to bloodworms, and adult brine shrimp frozen are totally broken up.

Earthworms? The size is the problem. Chopping them up unless you freeze them is gross and messy. I prefer to use smaller options. I've used them with some dwarf cichlids.

 

[CaptainBarnicles]

You don’t actually. Unless they’re very small, you can hold them just in front of the saddle and gently squeeze them empty in one go (a la toothpaste).

Oh jeez

 

[UnityLover]

Damn you guys think its grows chopping up earthworms?
I go fishing, I already stab them 3 times on one hook with my bare hands. I think I can chop them up, then let them sit in some water for an hour.

 

[GaryE]

You can crap them out in shredded newspaper, and then refrigerate them before you chop - it's easier to get small pieces that way. I'm a softie though, I always feel sorry for the poor worm.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I breed plecos. In the wild they eat can find live food, but in my tanks they find what I feed. The one thing I know is that diet is one of the more critical components in terms of successful breeding and raising of young fish.

If one can manage the proper live foods, they are some of the best things to feed. However, I do not do live foods do to several considerations. So my job was to find good alternatives. However, when I was trying to find the best foods to feed I did try two things which I gave up. The first was ghatching BBS for fry and the second was feeding live red wiggler worms (the compost guys). For my corys I would cut the smaller worms in half. One feeding of them to my sterbae got me eggs within a week almost every time.

I feed three basic types of food. The first are quality frozen. Hikari is excellent but can be expensive. SF Bay is also decent. But I buy many of my frozen food from Jehmco in bulk. The downside to frozen is that most are meat based and I also need to feed some veggies as well.

My second food preference if for Repashy. I use 4 of his foods, one ove these is less meat oriented and contains algae and some other veggies and fruit- Soilent Green. I mix it with two other meaty foods, Bottom Scratcher and Spawn & Grow. Finally, I also feed a fruit based food, Igapo Explorer. I consider the Repashy gel mixes to be some of the best foods I have found.

Finally, I also feed some commercial foods My current favorite if from Germany, Ebo-Aquaristik. I also feed a mix of flake I put together from kensfish.com. I have tried Bug Bites but prefer other foods although this is not a bad brand at all.

One last observation on all of this which deals with how much toime it takes to feed my three categories. I have had 20-28 tanks going for a number of years. I do 5-8 summer tanks, essentially outdoors, so the number fluctuates during the year. To feed repashy takes me the longest as I cut it into smaller pieces which a scatter throught a tank. I can take 30-40 minutes to feed all the tanks. To feed frozen takes me a bit less time, but I do two mixes, one for bigger fish and one for the babies. So thgis is 25 -30 minutes. Both foods take some prep time.

The fastest feed is the commercial stuff. I can feed all the tanks in 10 -15 minutes. This lure of fast feeding caused me to have some issues years back when I first began breeding plecos. I was pretty successful and it gave me a swelled head. I thought I had some special skills. So I got lazy and began feeding a lot of the commercial stuff and my fish began to slow down or to stop spawning. It Took two well known fish experts at CatCon in 2014 to tell me I should go back to what I was feeding when I was succeeding v.s, when they stopped spawning. That advice was some of the best I have gotten over the years. DIET MATTERS.

So, read labels before you buy. The less fillers and the more real foods matter. Vitamins and minerals matter. A varied diet is usually the better option as well. Sometimes I think that my fish eat a more varied and healthier diet than I do

 

[UnityLover]

Im likely going to feed two foods per fish. frozen brine shrimp twice a week for my betta and corys. Hikari vibra bites baby on any other day for my betta, and hikari sinking carnivore pellets on any other day for my corys.

 

[Byron]

Im likely going to feed two foods per fish. frozen brine shrimp twice a week for my betta and corys. Hikari vibra bites baby on any other day for my betta, and hikari sinking carnivore pellets on any other day for my corys.

Well, there is no way I would feed this stuff to my fish. I though it had been mentioned, but doesn't hurt to repeat. Thinking here only of the cories, and the Hikari sinking carnivore pellets. First, the protein is 47% which is too high. Bug Bites as an example is 34%, much, much better. Second, look at allthe trash in the ingredients: Fish meal, krill meal, brewers dried yeast, cassava starch, soybean meal, wheat starch, fish oil, wheat flour, dried seaweed meal, spirulina, DL-methionine, potato starch, astaxanthin, L-lysine, canthaxanthin, garlic, choline chloride, vitamin E supplement, L-ascorbyl-2-polyphosphate (stabilized vitamin C), inositol, d-calcium pantothenate, riboflavin, vitamin A supplement, thiamine mononitrate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, niacin, folic acid, vitamin D3 supplement, biotin, vitamin B12 supplement, ferrous sulfate, magnesium sulfate, zinc sulfate, manganese sulfate, copper sulfate, calcium iodate, red 3 (artificial color). The highest percentage ingredients are listing first, so this is really bad.

 

[AlexT]

Well, there is no way I would feed this stuff to my fish. I though it had been mentioned, but doesn't hurt to repeat. Thinking here only of the cories, and the Hikari sinking carnivore pellets. First, the protein is 47% which is too high. Bug Bites as an example is 34%, much, much better. Second, look at allthe trash in the ingredients: Fish meal, krill meal, brewers dried yeast, cassava starch, soybean meal, wheat starch, fish oil, wheat flour, dried seaweed meal, spirulina, DL-methionine, potato starch, astaxanthin, L-lysine, canthaxanthin, garlic, choline chloride, vitamin E supplement, L-ascorbyl-2-polyphosphate (stabilized vitamin C), inositol, d-calcium pantothenate, riboflavin, vitamin A supplement, thiamine mononitrate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, niacin, folic acid, vitamin D3 supplement, biotin, vitamin B12 supplement, ferrous sulfate, magnesium sulfate, zinc sulfate, manganese sulfate, copper sulfate, calcium iodate, red 3 (artificial color). The highest percentage ingredients are listing first, so this is really bad.

That's the not the first Hikari food where I have seen the ingredients and been shocked in a bad way.